


Tattered

by SrebrnaFH



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Bad experiences, Bullying, Childhood Memories, Electricity, Family, Hurt John, Hurt Sherlock, John is Smarter than he looks, M/M, No Smut, Protective John, References to Abuse, Social Mores, Sudden Relationship Change, Wing AU, Wingfic, Winglock, society, violence (non-explicit)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-04 15:51:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18346820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SrebrnaFH/pseuds/SrebrnaFH
Summary: John visits Baker Street without any warning and gets an eyeful.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [В лохмотья](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21355624) by [Little_Unicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Unicorn/pseuds/Little_Unicorn)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early morning spark of inspiration.

John wasn’t supposed to be home at that hour.

Correction.

John wasn’t supposed to be on Baker Street at that hour.

John lived in the suburbs, with his lying fiancee, her fake curls and her sweet smiles, just as fake as the curls.

John wasn’t supposed to see  _this_.

“Sh-Sherlock,” he choked. “What is this?”

Half of the primaries were missing. There were welts on the joints and all along his wing ulna, the remaining feathers were shaggy and limp and…

And John was never supposed to see them at all.

“My wings,” he mumbled, turning away. “Yes, I know. I have wings. I’m one of actual  _freaks_.”

Delicate, light fingers traced down the left wing, along the slowly-healing gash there. He couldn’t reach that part, he couldn’t twist enough to correct one of the bigger secondaries there and it was irritating him to no end. He shivered slightly as John’s touch sent a wave of unscratchable itches down his secondary shoulder.

And then John corrected the position of the feather.

It wasn’t like a joint popping back into place, as it was much less painful, but the  _relief_  was on par with popping one’s ears in the fast-raising airplane. He could finally move that part without the feeling of  _otherness_  that had plagued him ever since Mycroft had fetched him from that accursed dungeon.

“Where do you keep your brush and oils?” John’s voice was muffled as he reached into the tattered mass of small feathers and picked some debris that got lodged there. “Sherlock? Brush and oils? Or anything I can use to help you groom these?”

“B-but,” he blinked and shook his head. Family groomed each other. His mother helped him until the wings grew long and flexible enough for him to reach and stretch for cleaning. Mycroft had helped him - being flightless as he was, he had learnt from their father that caring for the winged family members is an honourable duty…

“Nevermind. Olive oil for now, but I will bring you something more adequate later. You should not be outside when you can’t really take your own full weight… and that will be a few weeks, if not months.”

Soft, caring, careful John. Cautious John. Skilled, delicate,  _loving_  John.

Tears prickled the corners of Sherlock’s eyes.

He wished. He  _had_  wished so many times, so  _many times_. To show him. To tell him. To wrap the soldier in the striped snow white and coal black of his Seeker plumage. To ask for help, to ask for…

Exactly for what John was doing right now. Deftly sorting the smallest feathers, cleaning each with a clean piece of towel, dabbing droplets of oil at the base of the ones worst off. Just what Sherlock would have done, had his shoulders not been injured enough to prevent him from reaching these sections.

“What happened?” John smoothed out another set, making sure they sat flat together. “You were whipped.”

That was a statement, not a question, but Sherlock confirmed with a bob of his head.

“Shit. This will take ages to heal. I will not be able to correct some of them, I’m afraid. Not without surgery and I…” he sighed. “I can’t do that.”

“Why?” he whispered rebelliously. “I’d let you.”

“Precision, Sherlock,” John sounded tired and Sherlock  _really_  wished he could turn around and wrap them both together in the cinnamon-scented darkness… But no, the cover was incomplete, and so would the wrapping be, so… “I can’t cut into your wing arm, I could damage it even further. But… Oh.”

Something about that “Oh” made Sherlock twitch uncontrollably.

“Sh, sshhh… Calm down. I see. Come on, fold them,” John guided his wings into the resting position, checking how the feathers interlocked in the process. “I see. They get snagged. But I think you will be OK. There is a ninety percent chance this will all grow back and smooth itself out. You will need to have some of them set, of course, but I can refer you to an army medic who specialises in wing trauma…”

“I can’t sleep,” he said before he managed to stop himself. “I can’t…”

“You will learn to,” was John’s simple answer.

_Hah. As if._

“I  _need_  my wings to sleep!” he groaned. “I can’t just… just  _fall_  asleep, like you do. I need to be able to cover my head and I can’t…”

“You will learn to sleep without using them,” John sounded so  _sure_ it made Sherlock see red.

“How!? How the hell am I expected to just… just sleep, like this? To see and hear and smell everything around me!?”

“Like the flightless do,” John explained mercilessly, putting another feather in a better position. “And like the winged do, when in social situations or disabled. Everyone learns, eventually. In the army, sleeping in a heap of feathers was seen as adolescent.”

“W-what?” he tried turning, but a firm hand on his right terminal phalanx kept him in place.

“That. Where do you think all the surplus Protectors go, when pairing off with a Seeker is so rare? The fight-protect-secure instinct is so strong they either join the police or the army. Now, bed. You will feel all these corrections even more in the morning. You need your nest and darkness to recuperate.”

_John met winged ones in the army. John took care of their wounds. John knew the grooming needs, the security needs, the…_

He choked the sob of relief as they stumbled towards his room, John’s hand securing the trailing, freshly-cleaned ends of his wings.

“You will need time to adjust,” the doctor said. “And I won’t have you run yourself ragged, so, hop on the bed and relax - as much as you can. Half-fold will be OK, won’t strain your muscles.”

“And you?” he eyed John’s toed-off shoes by the door.

“You will need the senses blocker, at least for now,” John was pulling off his jumper… and vest… And stretching himself on Sherlock’s bed…He felt something stumbling in his brain, as if a thought had stubbed a toe and was now careening in pain from wall to wall.

“But, you…”

“Come on, Sherlock. Touch, smell, warmth, you know it works.”

He slowly crawled up the bed, snuggling in with the golden soldier under his duvet.

“Now, full fold, as close to your body as you can bring them,” John commanded, while pulling the coverlet higher on them and Sherlock obeyed without even batting an eye.

“It will not be enough,” he whispered, curling into John’s side, completely disoriented and reeling from the sudden changes in the situation, but  _definitely_  not about to somehow protest against the events, not at all!

“I will,” John grabbed him around his shoulders and brought them flush with each other. “Close your eyes.”

“But it…!”

“Close. Your. Eyes.”

He did.

His wings folded quietly into the most relaxed, rested position, leaving his back looking as pale and empty as any flightless human’s.

And then there was a slithering sound of feathers, unfolding slowly and softly over them and a silky feeling of a wing surrounding him and covering his head, just like he needed, just like  _every_  winged one needed in order to sleep restfully.

He raised his head and looked up. The golden shade made John’s face look younger.

But.

_A wing._

Not  _two_ wings.

No winged could pull out  _one_ of his wings and keep the other one still hidden.

“Oh, God,” he moaned, curling even closer into John’s side.

“Sleep, Sherlock,” his one-winged Protector sighed. “At least that much I can give you. Sleep.”

His brain responded eagerly to the order, infused with ages of commanding others and…

Well. It must have been  _sentiment_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This kind of jumped me. Plot bunnies tend to do that.

 

“What about Mary, though?”

He didn’t want to ask - in fact, if he had his wishes, they’d spend the next few months cocooned in the golden shade of John’s wing and ignore the outside world with its stupidity, dumb remarks, dull, dull, dull people and lying, cheating little sneaks of girlfriends. Fiancees. Whatever.

He snuggled into the feathery mass of John’s wing and surreptitously sniffed at the base of a huge, golden-bronze dappled primary.

Lavender, eucalyptus and a hint of lemongrass.

_Oh. Oh._

John was using some rather high-end combination of essential oils to maintain his feathers. Definitely something Sherlock himself would splurge on, matching his hair products and other kinds of cosmetics. He had never seen John use anything but rather off-the-shelf shampoo or shower gel, but, surprisingly, the only aspect of his appearance that was not immediately visible was very expensively taken care of.

He sniffed some more.

Clean, soap, a whiff of sweat, but only fresh, related to the slight exertion of folding Sherlock’s wings and carrying them...

”Yeah, that,” John shifted uncomfortably, bringing Sherlock’s head into a better position on his shoulder. “I think... I think I’ve left her.”

”You _think_?” Sherlock asked with slight incredulity. “How can you not be sure of such matter?”

”I...” John trailed off, his free hand coming to cup the back of Sherlock’s head and carding through the curls. “I spoke to her about... about things. Other things. She asked me, today morning, she...” he trailed off.

Sherlock sniffed again.

”You’ve spent the day outside. She said something that made you leave, but you sat... in the park... hot-dog machine... coffee stand... Kensington Gardens. You sat there, watching people. Drank a coffee. It was nice, which is not common for the coffee stands in the parks. Coconut sprinkles, really, John? And then you came here and...”

”And saw your abysmal attempt at grooming yourself, yes.”

”So... what did she say to you? Early morning, I suppose, you left without drinking any tea or coffee, and you left in a hurry. This shirt smells of fresh laundry, it was on the top of the drying rack then. Not pressed, just hung to dry. So you just grabbed it, not going back to your bedroom for something from the wardrobe...”

”Yeah,” John confirmed heavily. “Let’s say that hearing some of her remarks turned me off from entering that particular room again.”

Sherlock bristled quietly, but snuffled into the soft skin of John’s shoulder and revelled in the muffling of outside sounds that the thick cover of John’s wing provided.

”She said,” John swallowed. “She asked me if I could...”

That sounded ominous.

”If I could keep my vest on in bed.”

_What?_

He must have moved uncomfortably, as John’s hand went up and down his arm, slowly pulling him even closer.

”She said my scar was disturbing her.”

_WHAT?_

“She said she could not focus... on things. In bed. Or when she hugged me. She...”

His Protector was shaking.

Sherlock’s hand sneaked out and covered the gnarled patch of skin that marked the site of the wound that took away, in one stroke, John’s army career, John’s surgical career and, apparently, his ability to exercise his Protector instincts. No surprise he had latched on to Sherlock so, even unknowing of the detective’s status as a Seeker... which probably heightened the effect subconsiously.

”She said she couldn’t look at your scar?” he asked, just to make sure he understood correctly. “That it disturbed her?”

”Yes,” John’s reply was subdued. “Who says such things...?!”

”Apparently little fake blondes,” Sherlock grumbled. “Did she ever say anything about it before? Mentioned it in passing?”

”Never,” the Protector’s wing tightened about the two of them. “And what do you mean by ‘fake blondes’...?”

”Bleached. Well, dyed, I suppose. She is naturally a brunette.”

”B-but...”

”Probably very, very dedicated to her disguise.”

John swallowed. Twice.

”Very dedicated,” he confirmed.

”So she waited until today to tell you that a feature of your appearance disturbs her enough for her to ask you to cover it?”

John took a shuddering breath.

”And I was considering, actually, telling her about this,” the feathers rustled softly. “I hadn’t slept with it out since... Since I moved in with her.”

”Six months!”

”Seven,” John corrected. “It’s been... hard.”

Sherlock snuggled closer, his hand posessively curling around the angry pink crater in John’s skin.

“You can always sleep with your wing out here,” he offered.

”Actually, I wanted to ask for...” John swallowed and paused. “If you would... can I come back home?”

_Home._

_It hadn’t felt like home since he came back._

_It was... exhilarating._

“You want to move back here?” Sherlock asked, just to make sure. “You... you want to leave her?”

”That’s what I said already,” John sighed. “I think I’ve already left her. It’s not like I can tell her that I not only have a hole in the shoulder, but I have a wing on the other one...!”

They breathed in sync for a while, Sherlock’s Seeker senses slowly relaxing under the physical cover of Protector’s feathers.

”John?”

”Mhm...?”

Oh. John’s instincts were apparently making him relax, too. Seekers without someone to help them bring their sensitive receptors under control became nervous, scattered and jumpy, but a Protector with no outlet became aggressive, paranoiac and quick to attack...

Oh. That was it. John had been with _her_  for half a year when Sherlock came back. He hadn’t had even a chance of making use of his skills and... aggression, check. Paranoia... check. Attack without warning, check. And then what? Then he mellowed down again. His Protector sensing the broken Seeker under his care... Gah. Biology...!

”When you move in...” he breathed, twice, to psych himself up. “Will you help me to sleep? Sometimes? At least until my wings fill in again...?”

”W-well, of course,” his friend stammered. “Dear God, I could not let you go on like this, not a day longer! You will need weeks of healing and adequate amount of sleep and reduction of stimuli will help significantly...!”

”Can I sleep with my wings out...?”

John shuddered.

”But that will mean our wings will touch,” he whispered. “It will be very...”

”I don’t have to! But, I just thought... I...”

”Sh, sh... of course you can, if it won’t feel weird to you. I just didn’t want to pressure you into anything that would be uncomfortable for you. You will be more comfortable like this, stretching them out... and I can try to massage these kinks out of your left wing, too. Just...” he sighed. “Ignore any reaction of my body, ok? For me, touching wings like this... it’s...”

John was warming up.

Oh. Blushing...!

”You mean, _this_?”

Sherlock slowly brought his wings up and stretched it out carefully, touching John’s first joint with the tip of his first feather.

“Yes, this, you bloody tease,” the doctor squeaked out.

”Ah,” Sherlock smiled. “So... if I asked you... if it would be fine for us to mesh the feathers...?”

“Sherlock, do you even know...?”

John’s voice sounded wonderfully, delightfully strained.

”What I just proposed? Obviously.”

”But... I...”

_Ah._

_”_ I’m sorry. Of course, don’t feel obliged to, I...”

”Sherlock.”

“You have declared your lack of interest in any...”

A tip of a golden feather pressed directly into the skin between his main wingblades silenced him.

”I just wanted to say it may be uncomfortable for you,” John breathed into his ear. “I won’t be able to cover your wings fully... it may feel rather unbalanced.”

”John, I look like a plucked, molting chicken. Seriously, you probably have more feathers in your one wing than I have in both of mine...! Also...” he raise slightly, looking at the tense, anxious doctor below him. “Oh my. It’s something about pride and performance. Or some other nonsense.”

”I’ll never be able to fly with you,” John croaked, voice breaking. “I won’t be able to protect you in flight.”

Sherlock lowered himself slowly, forearms bracketing John’s head, the golden wing covering them both like a small, feathery tent.

”Then I won’t fly,” he said simply. “I’ve never flown with anyone. I don’t need to. And you can’t guarantee that I will ever have enough flight feathers to carry me, so until this happens, there is no point in...”

”Mhm,” John looked up at him, eyes wide. “Would you be happy staying on the ground, with a lamed soldier and never...”

”There are times, John, when you really should shut up.”

Considering his Protector was opening his mouth to voice another objection, Sherlock decided to take the shortest possible route to his target and silenced him by slightly puffing up his wings and pushing them between John’s feathers, meshing the black and white stripes with the gold and bronze spots.

John’s silent gasp was all the reaction he needed as he dived right in and captured his Protector’s mouth with his.

_**She** never really had you. You were mine first, just as I was yours._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because my brain is basically a sulky toddler, I should never again attempt to say “nah, two chapters are all that I’m going to write here, totally not adding anything” because, obviously, the next thing I know, I’m running the dialogue between our two Winged in my mind.
> 
> So.
> 
> This will turn a bit dark, because the society is dark and dangerous and the world around us is dangerous, and it can’t be any less so even if you have wings.

Despite having discussed almost everything in their world (London, time at the universities, weather affecting feathers, mind-numbing televised shows) they had managed to avoid discussing the topic of family. Somehow. Sherlock felt however that it was high time for them to get John to part with some information, so, knowing his partner well enough already, he offered a fact from his side as an opening.

"Mummy is the winged one. She taught me everything, from the moment the first tufts of my wings appeared."

Sherlock was - rather luxuriously - stretched out on his belly in the middle of their bed and was cautiously flattening out his left wing, allowing John to check the dressings on the surgically adjusted feather follicles. He had had to undergo fifteen major corrections on said wing alone, with six minor ones scheduled to be done as soon as the main ones healed correctly and then there was a series of similar treatments to be applied to his right wing.

When he got back to London, all these weeks before, in early November, he had looked like a plucked chicken and had had about as much hope he would ever take flight again. Now, with care, everyday cleaning, exercise, proper hygiene and medical treatment, he was - potentially - looking at a remote chance of having one day wings that would be able to carry his weight in air.

And all that thanks to the focus of his Protector.

_His Protector!_

He couldn't stop a happy, giddy feeling that suffused him whenever he realised that he was now not only entitled to, but actually expected to call John by that appellation. John, in turn, called him 'his brilliant Seeker', 'his smart feather' and 'you git you drank all the milk again if I didn't like you so much you'd be in SUCH BIG TROUBLE'. Still, their newly established relationship meant a lot of other wonderful things - like cooking together ('It's simple chemistry!' 'you have some of the chemistry in your hair'), snuggling together on the sofa and sleeping tightly wound around each other in what used to be Sherlock's bed.

However, as a medically-trained Protector of an injured Seeker (now both properly outed to each other and conscious of their status - and deepening the emotional relationship with every passing day), and to add to it, a Protector who had gone long without exercising his natural instincts, John had turned out to be a ruthless dictator when it came to Sherlock's wings. As soon as he could, he had set up an appointment with one of the main specialists in Winged injuries available in London (not the one suggested by Mycroft, Sherlock noted, but someone John knew from the military). He then followed it up, read the documentation, picked the treatments and, what gave him probably the most relief, accompanied Sherlock to each and every meeting, discussion and check-up.

Of course there had been one, or maybe two or three specialists who questioned John's presence at these occasions and tried to undermine his authority, but fortunately only one went so far as to attempt to remove John from the room bodily. The swift hiss of John's expanding wing did not surprise Sherlock anymore, except maybe for the fact that he _did_ display it anywhere outside of their home at all. It was however nothing compared to how people in the hospital reacted to it. One nurse actually fainted.

And that was not because of the state of John's wing - quite to the contrary. It was a well-kept adult wing of full plumage, strong bones and shiny feathers. The reaction from the medical personnel had been so strong simply because there was only one of it. Everyone who had even a modicum of contact with winged ones knew how the physiology of displaying them worked (or at least they thought they knew, but that was not the point). Showing only _one_ wing either required tremendous amounts of self-control (there were legendary or semi-historical stories of people who could, if they wished, show only one wing, but nobody really believed them to have been true) or was the result of some tragically disfiguring injuries. Of which, the second was quite true in John's case, in fact. That affected the doctors and nurses the most, as they could imagine in the best kind of detail what must have been the injury that was responsible for someone to lose the whole wing.

They would also have known that John had barely survived the loss, at first, due to the wound, and later, due to depression that sets in on any Winged who becomes forcibly grounded, as the statistics of injured Winged survival were well-known and anyone working with wing injuries knew in detail how quickly a wound to the shoulder, right at the base of the wing, may kill... And how often soldiers who lose the ability to fly die by their own hand - or expire in an attempt to fly on wings that can't carry them.

The very authority that a wounded veteran with personal experience in such a loss - and a medical degree - carried, helped to move the proceedings through the required stages. Discussions were cut short, approvals received, general plan of treatment and physical therapy schedule drafted and approved, most of it without Sherlock's active input. Despite his direct and personal interest in the process, he ceded most of the responsibility to John, allowing himself to indulge in watching as John let his Protector instincts go, including, but not limited to, ripping an unsuspecting anaesthesiologist a new one when the dose of the needed painkiller was not delivered on time during the surgery.

It had been - and still would be, he reminded himself - an exhilarating experience to witness John going all Captain Doctor Watson on so many people of authority - and all of it specifically for _Sherlock's_ sake.

Now, however, they were in bed. Sherlock's - their - bedroom, and John's strong but careful fingers were slowly going up and down each section of the wing, making sure that the newly regrown feathers would not get tangled with others or snagged in the bandages and gauze. They had been doing that every day since the surgery, twice, to ensure there was a minimum of new corrections to be done in the phases of treatment to follow.

Sherlock, in turn, learnt to groom John's wing, cleaning the long, wide primaries of the accumulated dust and checking them for accidental damage. They had managed to get the whole thing down to an art - slow evenings of mutual care, ending in the dim warmth of their shared bed, where safety was ensured, and comfort of muted senses was provided to Sherlock while John's innate need to guard his partner's sleep was finally given the right outlet.

"My grandmother was," John answered absently. "Although she hid it. She only told us when I started breaking through. Took me for the whole summer vacation to her country cottage. Harry was trying to be at the same time jealous and consoling - she was fascinated by the idea of having wings, but she hated the cottage."

"You didn't."

"I liked it. A lot. And it was a safe place for a fledgling. Grandma showed me how to care for my own wings and someone else's, if needed. She said that as a Protector, I may be called on to help others, including other Protectors, if they got hurt."

"And you went on to join the Army, where it happened, a lot," Sherlock murmured, relaxing even further.

"Well, Army paid for my uni - even with the discount for the winged I couldn't afford it by myself - so it was the only way to fully make use of my potential. Also, in civilian life, it's Seekers who are preferred as doctors, actually. Protectors are often asked if they wouldn't rather get nursing degrees."

Sherlock frowned and tried to turn.

"Lie down, I'm not finished yet."

"You must be having me on," Sherlock groused. "How can they suggest that Protectors should be nurses and Seekers should be doctors?"

"Seekers are natural researchers. Diagnosticians, too. By the profile, they have less patience for everyday, mundane tasks, are easily bored without a challenge and can't be bothered to stick to a schedule unless someone manages them. Does it sound like anyone I know? Can you imagine yourself - a venerated diagnostician in some important hospital, maybe surrounded by a circle of assistants, all at your beck and call, and you going through the most challenging cases... Doctor Holmes, doesn't it have a nice ring to it?"

“But if…” Sherlock felt uneasy with the idea. “Well, it sounds reasonable, in some way. But also terribly close-minded. It's not like everyone follows the career path suggested by their bodies. There are tiny women who become building site fore...persons, and there are big beefy men who are preschool teachers... and that idiocy about instincts is just terrible. Do they really say this stuff to the candidates?”

John sighed and pressed a soft, warm kiss into the naked skin between Sherlock's shoulder blades.

“Yep. I was asked if I don’t feel my Protector reflexes would serve better in some area related to caretaking. And I wanted to be a surgeon, dammit. Once I declared that I was willing to sign up for two tours, of course they couldn't get the papers prepared fast enough. Army loves Protectors in medical corps, whatever role they want to take. In civilian medicine, however, there seems to be…” he sighed and stretched the wing, an equivalent of a an uncertain shrug.

“A prejudice?”

“I suppose so,” more rustling and Sherlock felt the short, strong fingers digging into his shoulder muscles, spreading one of John's preferred warming massage oil mixes. A soft groan escaped him as the tension he had been carrying all day was pressed out of him with a subtle waft of almond and spices.

John had turned out not only to be a tyrant when it came to the maintenance of one's wings, but also a very sensual, caring and tactile partner. After a rather ugly yet effectively executed final breakup with Mary (which, as the immediate outcome, necessitated John's resignation from the surgery - and  he did that with alacrity) and removal of his surviving possessions to 221B, the two initiated their re-found (and newly deepened) closeness with a sweet, incredibly intimate evening of mutual grooming. It set up the stage for their subsequent days at home, allowing them to progress through the relatively innocent stages to where they were now - lovers in mind and body, always close to each other, equal in all things that mattered.

"You've spent the summer with your grandmother then?" Sherlock suggested sleepily. "Was it enough?"

"Absolutely not," John found a bit of a tense muscle and started pressing into that knot, warming it up slowly. "I've transferred to the local school for a year and even after I went back home, I've spent my every summer with her, until she moved to the care home. Harry came with me for a few days every time, because Grandma was trying to teach her how to care for me in case of an emergency, but that didn't really work out. My sister is too much of a city girl and a rooster waking up the village at dawn annoyed her to no end. Not to mention all kinds of insects, mice and village dogs. The only animal she accepted was the fat barn cat - probably because it regulated the mice population and was big enough to take on some of the dogs, too."

"Must have been a bit lonely..."

John paused for a moment.

"Not really. Grandma felt better with me around, and my Protector reflexes were strengthened by taking care of my own grandmother. A senior Seeker is a delicate creature, especially if she had lived in relative isolation from other winged for years."

"Oh," he frowned into the pillow. "Why did she hide so? Mummy..."

John sighed, capped the bottle with a snap, wiped the excess oil on a small towel and slid under Sherlock's right wing, closing his eyes and pressing his face into the thick down feathers at the base.

_Oh._

John was seeking comfort. Not often. His strict discipline and ability to sleep in any situation (if not restfully) made him seem impervious against the needs of a civilian winged, as he had explained at the very beginning, but now, now he needed it and it was something infinitely precious.

A Protector needing comfort and senses blocking from his Seeker.

Protectors in general did not require that much when it came to bringing the feeling of physical safety - research showed that the best rested ones were those who were assured of their Seekers' security, not the ones who were safe and comfortable themselves. That made them vulnerable to exploitation in some less balanced situations, as it left them open to dangers they would have otherwise guarded themselves against.

Sometimes however, especially in a good and balanced relationship, it was the Seeker who would provide the purely physical means of comfort for their partner. Sherlock was more than willing to let John rest his overloaded brain like this - especially since the weeks leading to that point had been spent in a constant whirlwind of tension for both of them. It satisfied something deep inside him, something that only John woke up in him, diffusing a wave of warmth through his taller frame when John - his perfect soldier, his one-winged Protector, his devoted guardian - allowed himself to be taken care of so blatantly and directly.

"She had been wary of Protectors," John explained with a sigh that ruffled the short fluff of feathers he was surrounded with. "She had had some very bad experiences of Protectors who overdid - well, I can't honestly call it 'care', because what they wanted was pure _control_. She had had admirers and some who promised her everything if she agreed to pair up with them... She had to move, across half of the country, hiding her wings and marrying my grandfather in Edinburgh. She told me later, when I was sixteen and she thought I was old enough to understand... They wanted her to be a..." he buried his face in Sherlock's biceps. "A breeding female. Female and a Seeker, in public opinion less stable emotionally on two accounts, plus she was studying to be a teacher. There was a lot of that kind of supremacy macho crap that they spewed - and I'm quoting her here, she had quite a potty mouth - so she finished her degree, got her diploma and found a job in Scotland. And a fiance. And, well, here I am. A Protector brought up by a Seeker who was afraid of other Protectors."

Sherlock curled up on his side, pulling the blankets over them and covering John with his outstretched right wing, keeping the left one loosely hanging behind. They took a moment to find a good position - fitting all the long limbs and muscled roundnesses correctly together - ending up with Sherlock very closely plastered to John's now wingless back. With Sherlock's left wing covered with gauze, bandages and plasters it was hard for them to coordinate, so John sacrificed his comfort of sleeping with the wing out for the comfort that came from the contact between their bodies.

Soft, golden skin of John's neck asked to be kissed and Sherlock could not deny anything John asked (or could be perceived to be asking) for. His lips worshipped the muscled shoulders of the man who could have so easily taken the control over what happened in that bed and yet ceded that control to him, allowing Sherlock to proceed as he wished.

"And you?" John whispered as they paused and just laid together calmly. "Did you have a partner, someone to help you calm down, support you...?"

He sighed.

"My mother. She is a Protector."

"Oh," John moved in surprise. "That's not a _very_ good combination."

Well, that was unexpected. John had never displayed this kind of prejudice... Female Protectors were not exactly common, but they were nothing exotic...!

"A parent should not be their own child's Protector," the doctor continued slowly. "Well, needs must, but they tend to, on average, coddle the youngsters. I'm not saying it happened with you - I haven't met your mother - but in general, it is advised to have uncles or aunts - or grandparents - as first Protectors for a young Seeker."

"There was nobody else," he huffed into the blond hair. "And Mummy... Well. I think she tried very hard not to overdo it. Not that she managed, what with me being very much accident-prone and local kids being mostly..." he shrugged. "But she taught me everything I needed and managed to make me pretty much independent from a Protector. I think she held a view - or maybe she assumed that the world held the view - that a shiftless Seeker without a partner would be more susceptible to being charmed by an unscrupulous Protector."

"Guys like these make me question the whole naming convention of our subspecies," John groused. "I mean, what are they protectors of? Would they allow their partners to work and use their abilities?  What is a Seeker without a cause to work on?"

Sherlock heaved a sigh and wrapped himself and his mobile wing tighter around John.

"And that's why I love you," he whispered against the warm nape of his soldier's neck. "My Protector."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An invitation, some flirting and a ball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the planned Chapter 4 grew in editing, I'm splitting it in half.

It turned out quite quickly that their conversation about family did not come a moment too early. A few days before Sherlock's right wing was scheduled to be undergoing the last adjustments (less pressing, cosmetic-level surgeries) an invitation arrived. A nice, thick piece of cardstock of high cotton content. Embossed. Signed by hand. In elegant cursive.

Mummy's birthday. And she was throwing a ball. She. His mother, the woman who could be seen in her garden, on her knees, digging in the dirt to plant sage or strawberries or who could spend all day barricaded in her study and then sit to dinner with a large smear of ink across her forehead... A ball. Yeah. He remembered birthdays of the past, mostly picnics and garden parties, but a ball?

Ah. Her sixty-fifth. That was probably the explanation. Well, a huge occasion, she would hopefully let it go if he sneaked out during the dancing and went back home. To John.

There was an additional little slip of paper there, however, that made Sherlock grimace in distaste.

_Please bring your friend along, Sherlock. We wish to meet him._

He wondered whether that was a royal We or did she mean Father had expressed an interest in his younger son's personal life. While Father had always been reasonably supportive, he had _never_ been intrusive... But there was a distinct possibility he was curious, too.

_Well. This will be exhausting._

He left the invitation on the kitchen counter and decided to talk to John about the idea later.

Much later, preferably.

 

####

 

"Well, look at it this way. At least it's scheduled two weeks after your last incisions are supposed to be properly healed," John wrapped the last right wing joint with care and applied the salve to the irritated skin around the cut. "And it also gives me time to find something adequate to wear."

Sherlock grimaced. Yeah, that...

"It will be black tie," he sighed. "I will have to wear a blasted tuxedo... I will feel choked most of the time. Garkh."

"Don't be a baby," John slid his fingers down to where some feathers had grown back unevenly, breaking up the neat striped pattern that had been Sherlock's most distinguishing feature since he had gotten his teen feathers. "Well, I will have to think about it... I don't have anything that would work..." he smoothed down one of the gauze squares and hummed. "I could rent a tux, I suppose. There has to be a renting place in this city that offers something for people shorter than six feet."

Sherlock's sudden turn tore his wing out of John's hands and put them face to face as he backed the soldier into the wall, looming over him.

"My Protector will not go around in a lousy rented tux," he half-growled, half-whispered. "I will..." he trailed his hands over the muscled shoulders, strong back, down to John's slim-but-well-hidden-by-these-obnoxious-jeans hips, "take you shopping."

"You won't be buying me clothes," John protested weakly. "I'm not a kept..."

A kiss silenced him most effectively.

"Don't for a moment think I don't know how much a skilled Winged therapist is paid when working on someone's wings exclusively," he took up John's hand, still faintly smelling of the medicine that had been so carefully massaged into the injured joint and kissed the inside of the strong palm. "I know that you do it because you are my Protector, but you can't really get a full-time job while you are taking care of me, so it is up to me to make up the difference. And I'm not offering to _pay_ you, because we are not in this kind of relationship..." he dipped again to catch John's lips in a kiss aimed at silencing any protest by the means of redirecting the discussion to more bedroom-oriented track. "But I will buy you the kind of tuxedo you deserve. If only because then I will get to look at you in it for the whole evening."

"Spoilt creature," John gasped, catching a breath with effort. "Fine, fine. I will play dress-up for you, but _you_ will be good for your Protector and tomorrow, you will come quietly and without protesting to your therapy session. They plan to work on your balance with these new feathers."

"I thought I could be good to my Protector in some other way," Sherlock purred.

"No, _that_ would be you being the insatiable boyfriend," John countered with a fond smile.  "Your Protector will be satisfied only if you follow your therapy plan."

"We can cover the insatiable boyfriend angle now," Sherlock agreed happily, his half-folded wings shivering in excitement. "And tomorrow I will let you go all Protector on these nasty people in the medical centre."

John rubbed his nose against the crook of Sherlock's elbow, kissing the well-healed skin there.

"They have your best interest in mind, you annoying lazy Seeker. As do I."

"I'm not lazy, I simply choose carefully what I expend my energy on," Sherlock informed him haughtily. The effect was spoilt by John pressing himself closer to him in a most wanton fashion. "Yes, for example on this. And, may I ask, who were you calling insatiable just minutes ago…?"

 

####

 

The tux was hugging John's body in all the right places, so much so that even the tailor seemed to be rather impressed by the outcome of his work. There had been a suggestion floated by Sherlock (and firmly squashed by John) to make it a tux with a kilt and the elderly tailor shop owner, the master cutter and his two assistants seemed to be rather taken with the idea. However, after some discussion and banding about several different ideas, they settled on a solution with a pair of trousers due to John's simple refusal to wear anything else.

"Not that I have any prejudice against the idea of wearing a kilt in general, but I feel highly uncomfortable in them" John explained later, at home. "I had to wear the family colours for some very sombre occasions and they left me with a sustained hate for the feeling of wool on my skin. I can wear jumpers, before you ask, but woollen fabric on my naked arse is not what I want to think of for a whole official evening."

Sherlock sniffed with mock outrage at the pronouncement but quietly agreed that watching the way the tux trousers would underline the muscles on John's well-shaped body could be much more satisfying than seeing his boyfriend's naked knees in public.

_Boyfriend._

Suddenly, after that one conversation, after that one honest, painful afternoon, they progressed from friends and ex-flatmates (one with a fiancee, another with a hard to shake addiction) to lovers, partners… boyfriends. The moment Sherlock saw John's wing tenting above them, he had finally felt he was back home. The whole month prior to that they had spent separated, with Sherlock nursing his injuries in secret and John trying to live the good doctor's life with his nurse betrothed, and not for a second of it Sherlock had felt as relaxed and welcome as when, still broken and in pain, he allowed himself to relax into the safe and secure embrace of his Protector.

And now, now he could put that fact on display. He had a boyfriend (which sounded adolescent, but satisfied something deep inside Sherlock that had apparently been quietly yearning for such a connection for _ages_ ), a partner (which boded well for his future stability and sounded like what a grownup would have, and that satisfied that part of Sherlock's soul that wished for continuity and - dared he say it - stability) and, well, a lover. Which satisfied both of them, daily, hourly. Constantly. In some very surprising ways, making him shake his head at his past stupidity whenever he thought back to his overblown fears regarding John's expectations for their intimacy…

He smiled at the well-dressed and well-decorated man by his side.

_Ah, decoration._

That very morning they had sat at their dining table, over a large box that contained all of John's medals. At long last, Sherlock could check all of them openly, read the inscriptions, rifle through the paperwork and documents that came in the same box and, in general, satisfy his need to _know_ that aspect of his partner. He happily touched everything, perused the orders that came with the decorations and promotions and, when John pulled out the actual medals, greedily ran his fingers along the row of multicoloured ribbons waiting to be pinned to the left breast of John's new tux, over and over again, relishing the alternating sleek and coarse structure of the fabric, while John was carefully putting them in the desired order. There was one miniature which, despite it being obviously the most senior of the lot, John had taken out and laid decisively aside - a single, stylised white gold wing on a silky snow-white ribbon decorated with three silver feather devices. Sherlock had held it for a moment, weighing it carefully, letting the cool touch of the smooth whiteness caress his skin, but allowed John to pluck it from his fingers and put it back in the box when his partner was done arranging the decorations to his satisfaction.

Even without the Golden Wing (with the three Silver Angel Feathers, which, as John explained quietly and a bit absently, were the Winged device for Mentioned in Despatches) the row of decorations sported by his Protector was rather awe-inspiring. The Wing, awarded almost as rarely as the Victoria Cross, would have been the most impressive, of course, but others, of nearly equal rank, showed to the world what kind of a man chose him, Sherlock Holmes, to have and to be with.

And to go to the blasted birthday ball with.

All handsome, muscled and dangerously military in bearing despite the wholly civilian (bar the medals) tuxedo, Captain John Watson smiled up at his Seeker and brought the musician's hand to his lips for a kiss to the knuckles.

_Well then. I really hope you know what you are doing, John._

 

####

 

The ball was, in fact, rather impressive. The rooms of his parents' country mansion were illuminated brilliantly, there was an actually competent string quartet quietly providing the background music and nobody was very drunk yet. Mummy was shining, Father was smiling in the background and everyone was adequately elegant, superficially kind to each other and very much on a lookout for new gossip. Also most - if not all - of the Winged wore their wings on display. Sherlock stiffened when he saw that, but it was too late to turn back and pretend they had never been there.

"Brother," Mycroft sighed heavily when he saw them, as if very much put upon, "and Doctor Watson. How good of you to join us. Mummy is very anxious to see Sherlock, as he has been avoiding her invitations for the last three years."

"I have been otherwise engaged, if you remember," Sherlock managed not to grind his teeth too loudly. "Not sure how happy she would have been to have me drop in when I was supposedly officially dead."

He felt John stiffening up at that statement, but a quick squeeze to his fingers and a fleeting eye contact were enough for his Protector to relax again.

"It is of no consequence," Mycroft nodded minutely, acknowledging the point. "But it is expected that all of the winged ones will display openly for the evening. I'm not exactly sure what the point is, but that's Mummy for you."

Sherlock shivered. He wasn't used to just showing his wings like this, in public, even if it was the limited "public" of the house he grew up in. With the sharply contrasting striped pattern, his plumage always attracted unwanted attention from many of his parents' so-called friends' children. Especially the big, beefy, self-assured sportsman specimens, half of whom were Protectors - and half of which again were of the kind that caused more sensitive Seeker souls like John's grandmother to hide their identity - bullies by their unregulated nature and idiots due to their undisciplined minds. They saw any Seeker as a damsel in distress, for some reason equating more cerebral and inquisitive nature of Seekers with a weakness of will and inherent submissiveness.

"Come on, Sherlock," John's warm palm was on his hip. "Where can you openly show off if not in your parents' house?"

_Oh, John, if only you knew...!_

But he had prepared for that particular situation, hadn't he? He picked the shirt with the wing-slits and the jacket that had the neatly buttoned flaps sewn in for that exact purpose. Semi-subconsciously, he had dressed to be ready for a display that evening. That didn't mean he _wanted_ to do it.

John's hand was hovering over the covered buttons on the back of Sherlock's tuxedo.

John was there for him. His Protector, always at his side.

He could do this. He could survive one evening of socialising and open wing display, if John was with him.

He sighed and nodded.

The buttons were opened and John was there, waiting, ready to help in case one of the newly re-grown feathers still got stuck.

They didn't.

His wings unfolded neatly, with a quiet whisper of air on the delicate surfaces, slightly uneven stripes of white and black anyway perfectly matching his evening attire.

"Lovely," John's soft voice was slightly choked. "It seems that everything is in its place, Sherlock. No snags or wrong angles."

He turned slowly to face his Protector and met John's large, blue eyes in anxious question.

"Mycroft, does everyone have to show...?"

"Well, that is the expected protocol..." his brother trailed away, looking at him in surprise. "Why... what..."

"It may not be advisable," John said simply. "People don't like seeing that."

"Sherlock's feathers are all grown back," Mycroft glanced up and down each of his wings. "What seems to be the issue?"

"John's aren't."

It was a rare pleasure to see Mycroft that flummoxed.

Apparently, the British Army managed to keep _some_ of their secrets away from the prying eyes of the British Government. Or maybe said eyes had never looked deep enough, having ignored the inconsequential little soldier completely.

"I'm so sorry, Doctor Watson," his brother stammered. Actually stammered. "But I'm afraid you will have to... the protocol..."

"It's not a good idea," John explained simply and in a very decided kind of voice. "Most people would be very discomfited by what they would see."

"Mycroft, I will walk around the bloody floor with my wings out like a good son, but Mummy can't expect John to show his if he doesn't want to. It is a private matter to him."

His brother looked very much put upon, but he sighed heavily.

"I will have to warn her."

"Why?" John shrugged. "I mean, she knows Sherlock is winged because she's his mother, but she doesn't know about me. I don't see the point of even raising the topic. I'm definitely not going to show my feathers at any point - nobody is going to ask me, are they. Unless we meet someone who knows me from the Army and they are really insistent... And then I can just leave, I suppose."

"And I will leave with John," Sherlock provided quickly. "But, John, we _have_ to tell her. Mummy will know you are a Protector - my Protector. Just like she always knew with all these wannabe alpha males who tried to..."

He swallowed, looking away, but he saw John's face growing stony as the understanding dawned on the doctor.

"They tried to... Because you are a Seeker...?" his partner grimaced with distaste. "But... that's so wrong!"

"Well, Mummy usually sussed them out before they managed to lie more than just an eye on Sherlock," Mycroft explained frostily. "But that's why I will, despite your suggestion, tell Mummy who you are. She does have a very keen eye for people around Sherlock and she will know you are his Protector the moment she sees you. She is, after all, his first Protector, and her instincts in that area are unerring. I will explain that she should not ask you to display with everyone. I think she will be more than understanding,” his glance at the neat row of John's medals and a slow blink at Sherlock suggested the line of reasoning he was going to use.

“Thank you, Mycroft,” John's gratitude seemed actually heartfelt to Sherlock. “This… If it helps, I can meet with her in private. I am almost sure, however, that this... is not something the general public should be exposed to.”

Mycroft _was_ intelligent. He could count and knew wing physiology well enough to be able to extrapolate what kind of injuries John must have sustained in order to be _still_ missing feathers over four years later. The fact that his suspicions would be almost certainly far from the actual truth was not important. His willingness to help them was the vital point.

Hopefully Mummy would not ask John to provide a material proof to support his request to keep his wing hidden. It _was_ a very private matter - a very private tragedy - of his partner, and the last thing Sherlock would ask of John would be to display his wing in front of such relative strangers as his parents.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 was supposed to be the last one, but then I started editing it. And editing. And it kind of... GREW.  
> So I'm editing now and rewriting the very finale of Chapter 6, because CH5 went from 4k to 6,7k today and I feel i need to split it.  
> So, Ch6 coming soon. And I mean, soon. As in, maybe half an hour.

The whole experience was more than excruciating. Elderly aunties of varied level of blood relationship flocked in from all corners of the room the moment they entered. The next group to approach them were the dry, greying, looking-down-their-noses so-called uncles who always had a lot to say about his character (lack thereof), his political career (his what?), his chances for fame (quite enough of that, thank you) and his mental stability. The last point, always alluded to in a roundabout way and always with a little smile, was accompanied invariably with a look up and down his feathers.

He wished he could hide them.

He wished he could stop being on display.

He wished to curl up with John on their bed and ignore the world in general for the next year. Or so.

Unfortunately most of the people present knew anyway he was a Seeker and it would not have made a whit of difference if he hid them now. Probably, with some, it would have provoked even worse reactions.

He suffered through several of these delightful conversations, with the only thing keeping him from escaping outside being John's arm around his waist and the doctor's steady hand on his hip. The warmth supporting him from the side, the quiet, discreet shake of laughter (John could keep a perfect stony face, unreadable to anyone but Sherlock, who could identify even the most minute tightening of his partner's eyes and lips), the cough of choked hilarity and the slight, comforting, tightening of John's hold of him - all of it made the evening almost bearable. Almost.

After braving the throngs of mindless elderly, their next choice was to either mingle with people more their age (and maybe find someone of a military background for John to finally be able to talk to) or to greet his parents, who had just emerged from the bowels of the house, accompanied by Mycroft and two of a number of their younger cousins (if his memory served, actually reasonable young ladies, which was not a given in his family).

"Let's say hello to Mummy," he sighed, eyeing the 'younger sort' in the gardens with distaste. "She is probably dying of curiosity by now."

"What do you think Mycroft had told her?"

"Truth, as much as he knows, of course. If there is one person in the world he never lies to, it's Mummy. He can try to deceive Father, but Mummy's Protector instincts somehow also encompass Mycroft and she knows when he tries to sham."

"It must have been a delight when the two of you were growing up," John snorted. "No sneaking out, no skiving off school, no skipping homework..."

He looked at his partner in mock outrage.

"Does this mean I am putting the future of my wings in the hands of a serial truant and all-around bad student, Doctor Watson?"

"Just as I am putting my general future and wellbeing in the hands of someone who baits London police officers for a hobby. I, at least, have grown out of my more stupid ideas."

He stopped and pulled John closer, facing him with an intent look into the blue eyes.

"I gave up all of my stupider habits, too, John. I promise," he waited until his lover nodded in understanding. "There are things I will never do again. Ever. You must understand that."

"Sherlock," John reached up and cupped his cheek, warm skin on skin contact reassuring and comforting. "I know. And thank you. I know it is an effort and I am here for you. Always."

He bowed, closing the distance and their lips met, for a short, almost chaste - quite adequate for the situation - kiss. Nevertheless, there were some small explosions of laughter from the group visible through the large patio door and he caught a comment so crude he dearly hoped John had not been able to notice it. One look at the doctor's face told him, however, that it wasn't his overly sensitive ear that had allowed him to hear the slur, but the fact that the men out there were already quite sloshed and therefore rather loud.

"They think I am a flightless with a feather kink," John remarked in a very, very angrily steady voice. "Because, ah, I see, because you aren't normal and no Protector would take you up, so you had to resort to finding yourself a flightless human - a lower breed, according to them - and I'm probably mostly excited by your exotic looks. Therefore, I'm a pervert. Wonderful. Is this how higher classes of society talk to each other? It must be a delight to meet them more often. How popular is quiet stabbing as a cause of death in these circles?"

"Poisoning is much more prevalent," Mycroft provided with a sigh. "I have to admit I am _very_ tempted right now, but Mummy's cook would be inconsolable if someone even got a stomachache because of her cooking. I don't want to know what the woman would do if we had a guest actually die and the cause could be linked to the food."

"Stabbing it is, then," John raised an eyebrow at Mycroft. "Who do we start with?"

"Doctor Watson, how bloody-minded," Mycroft tsked quietly. "But if you can put the action off for a few minutes, I may have a target for you... and a clean, reasonably sharp World War II bayonet, to make the whole thing more complicated for the local police."

"Well, that could be a problem," Sherlock mused, still looking at John's animated face. "Because it is quite possible they would then consult with me, and here I am, hearing you plot a murder..."

"Locals still remember you as the shortarse kid who hang out around their so-called crime scenes and pointed out the mistakes they made when measuring the distance between evidence or laughed when they managed to stomp all over the footprints," a strong, laughing voice joined and Father clapped him on the shoulder. "What kind of a crime are you discussing?"

"Mycroft is considering hiring John to do some legwork for him. Of the more terminal kind."

His brother rolled his eyes, in a subtle, nearly unnoticeable way. There had to be a school for politicians that taught them to do these expressions discreetly - or the more intelligent ones would be forever stuck with a disgusted sneer on their faces.

"He almost volunteered. Anyway, Father, this is Doctor John Watson, Sherlock's..." he trailed away, letting them take control of the situation in an uncharacteristic display of openness.

"Protector," he finished quickly. "And life partner, yes, Father. Before you ask any embarrassing questions."

He heard John inhale slightly.

Ah, well. They hadn't discussed it before, had they? There was a distinct possibility that John would not wish to be outed, just like this, in front of so many strangers, all at once...

"Ah, John Watson," Father was smiling and turning to catch John's hand and there was nothing to do but persevere. "You were the source of enormous relief to us, your blog was a godsend. This one," he nodded at Sherlock, "is absolutely _hopeless_ when it comes to telling his dear old parents what is happening in his life. We had to badger Mycroft into providing us with any kind of updates and then you came along and it was so wonderful...! Violet was delighted to know that Sherlock had such a wonderful person to take care of him, too. She took to crowing about it, just a little bit. And just to me, don't worry."

"Father, John was just my flatmate at the time," he sighed. "Mummy was reading too much into it."

"Oh, was I?"

He felt John's hand tightening around his fingers. He hadn't even _noticed_ his mother approaching, so intent he had been on explaining the situation to his father and now she was there and, with her imposing wings of brass spotted with pewter, took over the situation.

Or she would have, had the situation not included John Watson. Who smiled at her in a rather tight fashion and nodded, at the same time stepping closer to Sherlock, right into his personal space.

"We were flatmates, just as Sherlock said," he explained in a very studiously neutral voice. "At the time, I was writing the blog as, well, partly my therapy and partly an ad for the business."

"Only because you thought my own blog was worthless," Sherlock grumbled and looked aside.

"I thought your blog was _very specialised_ ," John corrected with a small laugh. "I'm sure there are several dozens of people fascinated with cigarette ash in the world, but none of them would have come knocking on your door in search of help with a good case."

"Well," he sniffed. "I may concede that your blog was much more approachable to an average representative of the public."

"He means me," Father interjected. "I'm the idiot of the family, so they use me to check if something they say will go over an average bloke's head. And your blog was - is - a perfectly fine piece of writing, Doctor Watson. If the family idiot may say so, without injuring the author's feelings."

"Author's feelings were being injured on daily basis by a running commentary from significantly closer distance," John quipped semi-seriously, but the slight squeeze on Sherlock's fingers belied the hurt tone in his voice. "I will happily accept some compliments, sir, bring them on."

"Well, as I was saying," Mummy frowned, just slightly, looking at the man in front of her thoughtfully. "I wasn't reading too much into it. I think I was reading exactly what was written there. Wasn't I, Doctor Watson?"

"Ah," John smiled. Not at Mummy. Not at Father, who was watching him with definite approval. No, it was a half-sunny-half-sad smile, specifically for Sherlock and Sherlock alone. "It is quite possible you had caught me out, ma'am. But then I am the idiot in the household most of the time, so I should be accustomed to others understanding me better than I understand myself."

There is a point at which even a self-proclaimed sociopathic Seeker may have enough and for that particular Seeker that point arrived when his Protector - his lover - the actual _love of his life_ \- had called himself an idiot in front of others. Especially with the others being said Seeker's family.

Wings up, barring others from John's view (and John from theirs) he wrapped all around his partner and again used the, until now, as per careful observation and experimentation, most effective method of shutting his Protector down. As the method could be crudely summed up as "snog him senseless", it wasn't exactly a reasonable way of resolving most situations, but since its efficiency was proved and the situation called for desperate measures...

"I think, son, that I would like to have a little chat with your Doctor Watson and for that he has to be at least partially functional," his mother remarked lightly. "Would it be possible for you to detach yourself at least temporarily and allow me a little face to face with your... friend?"

He slowly released John from the grasp of his wings and watched as the man collapsed on the nearest settee, clutching for support.

"John?" he immediately sat next to him, bringing him closer and under one of his wings, giving his Protector a moment to collect himself.

"I'm fine," he heard the answer, slightly choked as he regained his breath. "Just warn me the next time before you cut off my oxygen supply, would you?"

A smile. A smile just for him, but still in that self-deprecating register. That humility that was not actual humility but real and true hurt. Hurt that he had caused John and hurt that John had covered with humour, protecting him, after a fashion, from his _own family_.

"Whoever criticised your blog is a complete dunderhead," he declared quietly. "And no, Mummy, you are not getting a little face to face with John. After all, you wouldn't want to leave me completely without my Protector for an extended period of time, would you?"

She paused. Looked back at Mycroft. At him. At John. Again at Mycroft.

"I think you will do just fine," she nodded at the soldier. "Welcome to the family, Protector. And since I see that there is something to what my older son had said, I will allow an exception for you today. I will however expect you to display together with other Winged at the next possible occasion. The Christmas Ball should be appropriately long from now, don't you think?"

He winced. John grimaced.

"I, actually I don't," John answered the rhetorical question honestly. "The situation won't change by Christmas - or any other randomly chosen date you may name."

She frowned.

_Uh-oh._

"Surely, with the advancement in medicine..." she began sharply, but John cut her off in an even sharper fashion.

"Which is my area of competence," he stiffly gestured towards Sherlock's wings. "With surgery and care we can get from some very deep damage and feather loss to what you see here now. Sherlock is practically a walking commercial for effective wing surgery and reconstruction. But nobody can recreate what doesn't _exist_ anymore. Despite all the magic that governs the functionality of the wings, some things don't regrow," John paused for a moment, allowing what he said to sink in for the others. "Now, what was it that you wanted to ask of me, ma'am?"

"How are you planning to be a Protector to my son when you can't fly?" she asked sharply. "How do you envision the two of you flying together? How do you plan to balance your infirmity and his needs? My son is a very demanding person and he would keep even a fully capable Protector on his toes, you know."

John bristled. He could do it quite well even without the wing being visible. In fact, it was incredibly effective that way. Sherlock could imagine the wing growing all big and puffy over his head as the doctor's eyes narrowed in anger.

"I had been running after _Sherlock_ for two years, not knowing he was a Seeker and him not knowing I was a Protector. We managed just fine, thank you very much. And I think that now, as we know each others' skills and weaknesses so much better, we will work together that much better, too. I'm not sure what your objective here is - do you wish to scare me off in order to trade Sherlock to one of the neighbouring families like a piece of meat on sale, exchange his life for a piece of land? Is he a medieval princess, to be sold to the highest bidder? Are you trying to just rile me up in order to get me to confess some of my dark secrets? Or are you simply stupid? Because I do not cross this option off the list, actually. You see, sir, there are some very intelligent people in this world who do immensely stupid things," he turned to Father and nodded slightly. "If you wish to see my credentials, ma'am, you can have a look at my military record. I'm sure your older son can get you a copy that will list also my marksmanship results, if that could console your maternal fear for the kind of security I can provide Sherlock with."

Mummy was frowning, thunderously. As much as he liked a good discussion, this was becoming way too much for such a public gathering. Last thing he wished for right now was to have his laundry aired in front of all these guests.

"Mummy, stop tormenting my Protector. Yes, John, she was most definitely riling you up - to make you display a weakness, but, what is most important, to see how exactly you react to the accusation of inadequacy. Now, are we done with the stupid  posturing and can we leave, or do the two of you need some more time in order to arm-wrestle for your control over me?"

John leaned closer into Sherlock's side with a sigh, turning his head away from the others and nodding, his forehead resting on Sherlock's shoulder.

"I would very much prefer to go home," he answered softly. "But I suppose there are some who expect you to talk to them, Sherlock, so let's take care of these and then leave as soon as we can."

Sherlock dipped his head for a kiss, working on his Protector's lips until John gave in and veritably melted into his embrace, making a small yet rather indecent noise in the back of his throat when Sherlock's hands went around his waist and pulled him in, much closer than the public situation would have usually warranted.

Mummy made a mock-outraged sound as they turned away and he kept his arm tight around John's shoulders.

"You have to accept it at some point, Mummy," he said over his shoulder. "John takes good care of me, and I of him. If you want to know what he had to work with at the beginning, I'm sure there is a way for you to have a look at my hospital records."

"I..." she shook her head. "I will talk to you later, Sherlock. I don't like it. I don't like it at all. You are too vulnerable like this...!"

He felt John stiffening in his embrace and, in a split second, they were back with his parents, with Sherlock unceremoniously being dragged behind his Protector. Who had in these few steps straightened from his until now casual and relaxed posture. That bristling from before? That was nothing. This was Captain John Watson, RAMC, sailing into the battle.

"Ma'am," he started, his voice hard and somehow almost an octave lower than his normal, pleasant tenor. "Your son has been living in London for months - years - without your direct support or anyone else's protection. He is a capable grownup, well-skilled in what he does and able to defend himself from anything he comes up against. You probably still see him as a boy in his second feathers, but you might have missed the fact that he is an adult. He had spent two years away from home, dealing with more enemies you may even imagine. He had sacrificed his health for his friends," John's hand trailed down Sherlock's left wing. "He had chosen me and for that I will be eternally grateful to him, and I will not allow anyone to question that choice. You brought him up, for which I thank you, but you have to let the fledging fly at some point, or you risk being tempted to clip his feathers to keep him safe at home. Let. Sherlock. Go."

Probably nobody had spoken this way to Violet Holmes ever before. Judging from the way Father was now eyeing John in undisguised curiosity, "the idiot of the family" was now very quickly calculating whether his wife would be capable of having John thrown out of the party while stopping Sherlock from leaving.

There was a moment of silence, in which John slowly brought up his hands and crossed them angrily in front of himself, puffing up his chest and letting the subtle-yet-eyecatching line of medals gleam in the lights. Sherlock stepped in closer and wrapped himself all over his lover, hands meeting at John's waist, chin lowered to his uninjured shoulder, temple touching to temple as he gazed up at his mother from that contorted position, bringing his wings up over the both of them.

She shook her head mutely and turned away from them.

"Do as you wish," was her final pronouncement as she walked away, followed by Father.

"Well, little brother," Mycroft seemed torn between several conflicting emotions, resulting in making him look more desperate than anything else. "I hope it was worth it. She _was_ your first Protector, after all."

"And that's why Seekers should be fostered to anyone who will not have doubled link to them," John rumbled darkly. "Historically, parents who are Protectors are the worst in letting go of their wards. Double the amount of hormones and every mother sees a barely-grown downy-feathered chick in her adult son."

"I suppose you have demolished _that_ illusion rather efficiently," Mycroft quipped with something that actually approached humour. "Oh, well. My turn now, I suppose."

"What do you...?" John frowned and paused as his brother rolled his eyes.

"How long do you think it will take her to notice that I'm forty-two and still not married? And with the two of you unlikely to produce grandchildren, I will surely find myself saddled with a series of exhausting, mind-numbingly idiotic set-up dates very soon..."

"You can thank me later for keeping her off your back for that long," Sherlock replied, watching his brother scrutinise the crowds around them with new eyes. "Better find someone that will suit you quickly and before she takes up all your free time and sets you up with someone you can't even stand to talk to."

His brother mumbled something derisive, but as someone called for his attention from the other end of the room, he left them alone with just a withering glance.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the bullies show their faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: A lot of abusive language and some nonexplicit threats. References to past abuse and planned abuse. One possibly jarring description of violence (involving electricity).  
> I upped the rating, just in case, but there is nothing explicit in this chapter.

The gardens were lovely and hopefully they would one day regain their natural splendour. It would take them some time to recover after the horde of guests, many of whom were now smoking (fifteen different brands of cigars, two types of pipe tobacco and one very low-end cigar), drinking (and throwing up, ugh), fighting and shagging, if he wasn't mistaken. Going by the low, happy groan that even John had heard, he was quite correct.

The grounds of the mansion were teeming with people trying to meet, not meet, avoid, insist on talking, escape from a conversation or just be a pest to everyone in general. Case in point, Steve Answorth, the only son and heir of their next-door neighbours. Claire Answorth had been long competing with Mummy in the area of garden decoration, or rather Claire had been competing and Mummy had been ignoring her, decorating her garden just as she wished it to be and sending Claire into fits of fury when her roses wouldn't climb the trellis or her morning glories wilted or whatever it was that Mummy had accidentally done and succeeded in. The only thing that Claire had that allowed her to lord over Mummy was Steve, who had sprouted his first steel-and-pewter wings a few months before Sherlock had shown his non-metallic plumage.

Mummy ignored that, too, obviously.

Right up until the moment when Steve decided that his destiny as a Protector is to beat up everyone and force them to submit to him and chose to start with Sherlock. The first time he showed up at their gate, wings out, asking if Sherlock could come with him and the boys to play some footie, she made an attempt to convince her younger son to join his classmates, but the moment she saw him shrinking away from the group (and specifically Steve), she sent them imperiously away.

Which resolved the problem of being beat up after school but did not help with what happened when they were inside. He tried not to mention it to her, but she knew, somehow. She recognised what happened on the days when he came home dragging his bag dejectedly behind him, but she stopped suggesting she would take him out of the school when he explained it would make the situation even worse. But he knew that she knew.

Just like John knew the moment Steve and a few others - his band of Winged singles, Protectors no Seeker wanted to touch with a ten feet pole - turned to stare at them.

"Boys, look who is back," Steve sauntered closer, his wings flexing in the dimmed light of the gardens. "Our own local microcelebrity. How honoured we are to be in the company of the great winged detective..."

They had never been particularly bright, but that was bordering on idiotic. A quick glance at John - his incredulously widening eyes, his slow blink and a frown - told Sherlock it wasn't just his personal feeling.

"Is he for real?" he heard John breathe.

"Unfortunately," he murmured, squeezing his soldier's fingers.

"Incredible, I thought he had died," another neighbour - Carl Marleigh - joined in. "These newspapers, never good for anything."

"Apart from learning that our old pal is back in the land of living," Steve nodded to Carl sagely. "Incredible, how a vacation away from home may change a man. He seems to have picked himself a bodyguard, too. How much did your brother have to pay him to accompany you here?" he asked over John's head, smirking at Sherlock in that old, infuriating way.

"Let's go home, John," he shook his head. Yes, he was a grownup now, and he had just told his mother to stop babying him, but he was not going to pick a fight with a bunch of his old school bullies. He had promised John he had given up his old, self-destructive tendencies and one of them would be baiting a group of people with obvious numerical advantage. Even with John's gun - and he knew John had secreted it under his jacket - they did buy a matching holster, after all - and Sherlock's semi-functional wings they would have a hard time keeping up against these five - no, seven - until the security arrived.

Security was surprisingly thin on the ground in that corner of the garden. In fact, he hadn't seen any of the guards that were supposed to be there for the last several minutes as they were strolling, but he had been too preoccupied by the situation with Mummy to pay attention...

"Looking for the guards?" Steve cocked his head to the side, smiling widely. "I think you will find them quite busy. Something about the fire in the kitchen... of a fight in the orchard. Or maybe a burglar in your mother's study. Not sure which one it was."

"There is a lot that can go wrong during such a long, complicated event," Carl added from the other side and Sherlock turned to face him.

Or tried to.

The very last feather in his left wing was nailed to the ground with Steve's heavy boot.

The pain was excruciating.

The only persons who had been touching his wings recently had been the nurses, the doctors and John. Even when they caused him discomfort, it had been in the pursuit of improvement of his state. Nobody had been _trying_ to hurt him recently - not since Serbia.

"Don't pull," John said softly. "It will take weeks for it to grow back."

"Pull, pull," Steve advised with a laugh. "We will wait for it to grow and then we will remove another, from the other wing. Or we will clip them permanently, like you do with decorative birds - nice to look at and not a flight risk - after all, why would a Seeker need to fly?"

"Take your foot off that feather if you want to keep your leg intact," John said in a tone not leaving any doubt as to his seriousness. "I'm not exactly sure who you think you are, but assaulting a son of your host is seen as breach of manners in any civilised country - and a few not so civilised subscribe to that notion, too."

"And where are you from? One of these less civilised countries?" Steve chortled from where he stood, smiling widely. "Where did you find him, Holmes? Far hills of Scotland? Did your parents hire you a wild mountain man and dressed him in proper clothing so you could parade him in public and look respectable?"

"Wooohoo, boys," a slightly tipsy, broad-winged youngster joined them. Mark Marleigh, grown significantly since Sherlock had seen him last, but not that much better off in the brain department. "Carl, have you heard? The Freak got himself a real Protector. He is no longer his Mummy's ward."

"Well, well, well... And where would your Protector be, little Seeker? Is he as freaky as you are? He must be, to be willing to fuck you and to let you come here on your own, with just this flightless for company..."

Sherlock stiffened, his wing still painfully immobilised by Steve's shoe, but his lover wasn't impeded by the same obstacle.

"Here," John moved faster than Steve could turn and pulled the man back, tripping him so that he wouldn't pull the feather out and Sherlock immediately folded his wings, wrapping them tightly around himself. "Any questions?"

"A Protector, you?" one of the others laughed. "You are too short to be a proper man, not to mention a Winged One."

Sherlock glanced at John, but his partner simply stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders.

"I am his Protector, and he is also under the protection of his family, and this is his home. I'm not sure what punks like you may want with him - or why you think he would like to have anything to do with any of you, so please leave. Now."

"You really don't know what this is all about," Carl laughed nastily. "Little lithe Seekers-sneakers, thin and pretty like girls. And you know what else? They like it like girls. And we know how to give it to them. Not sure what kind of a hole in the ground you've crawled out of, but here, in the country, we display our wings proudly, showing to all the world who and what we are. Why are you hiding your feathers, little Protector? Scared? Shy?"

"Does he have thin feathers? Or maybe his wings are... too short? Such a small guy, small hands, small feet... short wings," Carl's brother seemed to be quite intent on the general idea of insulting someone's masculinity. A failing quite common among the younger ranks of Protectors, who prided themselves with their ability to sustain high altitude flights and higher speed on long distance, somehow linking it to their male prowess and supposed skills as lovers.

_As if._

They laughed. John cocked his head to the side and looked up at Sherlock, smiling thinly.

"Let's go, Sherlock. I'm sure your mother will not hold it against us if we leave now."

"Are you afraid of competition, little Protector?"

"Are you chickening out?!" someone added from the small crowd.

"No," the soldier smiled, still serene on the surface, but eyes blazing with fury. "I'm just choosing not to engage in the idiocy of this exchange."

"We could take your Seeker and show him what is what," Steve had regained his courage. "Carl has this fancy toy, you know. Hits you with several hundred volts - not enough to kill a winged, but it makes them stretch out their wings and then, hey, you hold their wings, you can do what you wish to them, just like I did with your freaky boy's wing. There is a guy in Carl's company that has put this little box together, works wonders on more uptight prissy Seekers."

Sherlock felt faintly nauseous, but his mind was furiously recording all these exchanges. Lestrade would be delighted to know who was the source of the new assault weapon that had been used on several Seekers around the city. There was of course a risk of them lawyering up, but still, even the knowledge itself... Mycroft would be able to work on that, if Lestrade failed to get through their defence.

"If you need to use electricity and violence to get someone to listen to you, you are in fact already a failure," John shrugged and turned away. "Come on, Sherlock. I'd rather move before we catch the stupid from them."

"You lousy little fucker," Andrew Preston - a house two miles away, used to use his bike to ram into people on the schoolgrounds, until the headmaster banned any wheeled means of transport from the vicinity of the building - was up in John's face in seconds, looming over the doctor menacingly. "You'd better run and hide or I will find you and you won't like what I can do to a little limping coward like you. There will be no mercy, no way for you to claim we've offended anyone. It will be just you and us, like real men."

"Of course, there will be seven of you and one of me, to make things even," John sneered disdainfully at the taller Protector, stepped away and pulled Sherlock's face down to his for a kiss. "Let's..."

He didn't notice it in time. Having been turned slightly away from the group, he was excused. Probably.

Because John, despite being shorter and having Sherlock's wings blocking his line of sight, did notice it and, quick as a lighting, turned them around and shielded Sherlock with his own body.

He had been hit with high voltage current before, yes. Like every winged, he had slightly higher tolerance for it, but that didn't mean it was in any way a pleasant experience. Not in the slightest.

Somewhere in the group was a person that had shot at his back with something resembling a taser. With his Protector's reflexes, John had switched their places and now it was his back that the probes had attached to, but as John's hands reflexively tightened their hold on Sherlock, the current was flowing through both of them, wringing the muscles of Sherlock's shoulders painfully and forcing him to stretch out the wings to their full extent.

John was bowed backwards, fingers squeezing Sherlock's forearms so hard he would swear later he had heard some bones creak while his face contorted unnaturally, and his head shook helplessly.

And then the fabric of his shirt and tux surrendered to the greater force than the stitching was designed to withstand and John's beautiful, golden-and-bronze wing stretched involuntarily to its full size, knocking over some smaller pieces of decoration and lighting fixtures.

Several of the wannabe-alphas flinched.

Someone screamed.

Carl let go of the device he had been holding and took a step back, swearing loudly.

"Damned cripple, no wonder he doesn't display, but who would admit a blasted cripple into their house...!"

_Ah-ha. Good old purity of our species rant in the making..._

"Sherlock, let go," John coughed. "RUN! Don't let them catch you, love!"

As if. It was his home and his garden and they were not going to hurt John on his grounds. He squeezed John's forearms in an attempt at comfort and looked up, reaching to detach the probes from where they were stuck in John's neck.

He was sluggish. Too slow. Too dazed. Too uncoordinated.

And then Mark, the young idiot, picked up the trigger box and pressed the button again.

"Let's see what the stupid little limp-o does now," the kid laughed and Sherlock heard him as if through a thick curtain, as John's forehead almost touched his sternum and they froze in the locked muscles contortion brought on by the renewed onslaught of current.

And John screamed. In a completely new, raw, coarse voice.

A second wing unfolded from his back.

An exact, mirror replica of the golden one.

In pure, metallic white.

The kid fainted.

Someone was still screaming and only after a longer moment Sherlock did understand that it had been his own voice.

John was alternatively coughing and retching, spitting out blood and wincing at every movement.

"Desist!" Mycroft was finally there, accompanied by a small battalion of the house servants. "Catch and ground every featherhead except for my brother and his Protector. This had gone for too long! What the hell were they thinking? Ambulance! We will need medical attention here!"

"Where..." Sherlock wheezed, "where were you?"

"Dealing with a crisis of my own," Mycroft touched lightly at the growing bruise on his forehead. "It had been a three-pronged attempt at our family. Father, I think, rather surprised them with his moves. The fire in the kitchen was an inspired move on their side. Good thing the two of you managed to resist..."

"What...?" John was trying to stand up straight and toppling over to the side, his snow-white wing fluttering helplessly. "What the fuck had just happened? Why... Where is the Angel?" he turned round, losing his balance and careening into Sherlock and Mycroft, who caught him in a tight hold. "Bloody bastard motherfucker, why didn't you intervene…! Whose fucking wing is this!?!?"

"John," Mycroft cautiously immobilised the frantically beating white wing. "I think it's _yours_."

"No," John shook his head wildly. "No, can't be mine. It's white. Silverwhite. I'm normal. Nobody normal has them. Only seen single feathers. On people who sacrificed theirs for others. Do you know why Sherlock's stripes are no longer so regular?" he coughed again, spat out some more blood, leaning to the side and looked into Sherlock's eyes for a long, silent moment before saying slowly. "Three out of four grew back silverwhite."

"I grew... Angel feathers...?" Sherlock caught his own wing and trailed his fingers along the regrown plumage, finding the metallic shine amongst the common white feathers. "You never told me!"

"I wanted to tell you today," John shivered, wrapping his golden wing around himself, covering his bare skin with a layer of feathers. "Oh God, oh God, ohhh... I will have to learn to fly again. And to use it properly. After I stop wishing I never..." he started retching again, shaken by empty contortions of his stomach. "I can't have a whole Angel _wing_!"

"You can. You have. And you will re-learn to use it. Physical therapy," Sherlock caught his half-naked Protector and pulled him up. "Just like for your leg, John. _Just like for your leg._ "

They stood in stupefied silence for a few heartbeats.

"Psychosomatic limp," Sherlock finally gave the name to what the three of them were thinking. "You had… you lost the wing and never noticed that it had grown back. Oh, John, you are truly special…!"

"If you mean I’m an idiot, well, yeah, that's probably true," the doctor moaned. "How the hell am I ever supposed to explain THAT?" he pointed to the silvery wing. "I have… oh my God, they will never let me live it down…"

"What?" Sherlock pulled a blanket over his Protector’s back and handed him a bottle of water, which John greedily accepted. "What do you… Ah. Your unit. The meeting next month. They know you’re winged, all of them are, after all. And most of them are Protectors, they would have noticed you focusing on me and…"

"They would have teased us, I suppose. Asked if I am happy with a civilian. Stupid shit like this. Probably quite similar to what these cretins were pretending to be saying, but they would have been honestly _caring_. They know how bad I go without a Seeker to look after, even if it is a temporary thing. And…" he looked up and Sherlock saw the raw want in his face "I would have wished to show you off. I’m sorry, love, but you are quite special. I relished thinking about introducing you to them."

"And they would have known Angel feathers for what they are."

"Half of them have some," John provided with a sigh. "Just not... this!"

Mycroft made a noise that could be only described as a snort, so they both turned to take a look at him - standing all alone on a now-empty clearing, the security having dragged their assailants away very efficiently.

"I can guess, brother mine, that now I have all the time in the world to find myself a life partner," he explained his hilarity. "Mummy will never even look at me and my life choices after we tell her you have managed to snag a Protector with half of his plumage made up of Angel feathers. I can rest easy now. It will take her at least a year to plan and set up everything to her liking."

"Oh," John frowned. "Wait a moment. She will be planning _what_ exactly?"

"Your wedding," Mycroft explained with an 'it's obvious' expression. "I would consider running, if I were you. I give it a maximum of ten minutes before she learns what had happened."

"John can't leave like this," Sherlock pointed out tightly. "We need something for him to wear."

"This should be fine," his mother was standing at the edge of the clearing, her wings at tired half-fold, her hands full of folded cloth. "It should fit well enough... and it will be adequate for the rest of the evening... if you wish to stay, of course. I wouldn't hold it against you if you decided to leave now."

John leaned closer to him, shivering a bit, and nodded, so Sherlock opened the clasp on John's gun holster, took the shirt from his mother's hands and helped his partner into it, closing the under-wing fastenings with a snap.

"Thank you," his Protector - now weak and shaky like a kitten - smiled at him. "I'm not sure I have enough energy to hide them..." he looked up the living badge of honour, his full Angel wing of shimmering snowy feathers. "At this point, I'm not sure I could bring it back up, if I hid it!"

"Well then," Sherlock waited patiently for John to button up the shirt with his not so perfectly stable fingers and shrug the holster on back again. "You'll just have to sleep with it out. Like an adolescent."

John allowed Sherlock to help him into a slightly too long dinner jacket, smiling at him like an idiot. Sherlock probably sported the same kind of expression, as John's softened and transformed into something genuinely warm and open.

"I will. Like an adolescent. As long as you are there with me."

Sherlock pulled him slightly up, close enough for yet another kiss, of the more life-reaffirming variety. The "I'm glad you are here" kind of kiss, that quickly morphed into "I really wish we were alone" kind of kiss and that progressed to "Let's wait for them to leave" kind of kiss.

Which was interrupted by Mycroft's discreet cough. He was holding up his phone, the screen flashing with quickly moving pictures.

"I'm afraid the whole debacle had been documented though long lenses by some very intrepid journalist. There are photos of John cropping up on every major news site - and some celebrity blogs, too. Hashtags #angelwatson and #angeldoctor are trending on Twitter and... yes, there is an enquiry from someone as to the exact model of a gun you are wearing and if it is Army issue, and if yes, how come you are still using it."

John swallowed heavily and grimaced.

"I've allowed myself to answer for you, explaining that you've received the all the needed permissions to retain the use of your service weapon. The required paperwork is now filed and approved."

Obviously, Mycroft didn't _wink_ , because he never _winked_. However the little twitch of his eye was close enough to count. "Consider it an early wedding present, John. Welcome to the family."

As he left, dry leaves whispering under his feet, they stayed behind and stood in silence for a moment. Just a moment. Few heartbeats. A breath or two. Sherlock's wings fluttered over John's unevenly raised ones. Finally, slowly, slowly, he lowered them, covering his Protector's limbs, both the old and the newly regained one, allowing their feathers to mesh, colours flowing into each other, golden and silver, black and white.

In perfect balance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I think that should be it for our winged ones. Probably :)  
> There is a lovely illustration to this, here: <https://morgendaemmerung89.tumblr.com/post/184768007339/tattered-by-srebrnafh-gave-me-this-beautiful-idea>, thank you! Please visit and give a like :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello,
> 
> Thank you for making it that far!  
> This is my one of my bigger stories and I'm thankful to everyone who managed to read it. I have a small request to you however - a tiny thing that will help me improve, hopefully.  
> I am taking a writing course and one of the tasks is to ask my readers to describe my writing style in 3 adjectives. I'd be grateful if you could provide this kind of feedback :)  
> (if you provided it already somewhere else - THANK YOU! :))
> 
> Find me on [my tumblr](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/).  
> [My writing blog.](https://fanfik.wordpress.com/)  
> [My handmade blog.](https://srebrna.wordpress.com/)
> 
> Regards
> 
> Srebrna F H


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